Page 51 of The Drowned Woman
“But you were living together. How could you not know?”
Luka stifled his flinch. Ahearn couldn’t know it, but he echoed the exact words Cherise’s father had flung at him when the officials closed the case as suicide. At the time Luka had still been fighting for them to keep it open, investigate it as a possible homicide. But there’d been absolutely no evidence to suggest foul play or anyone else’s involvement, leaving the blame for Cherise’s death to fall on Luka.
Before Luka could respond, there was a knock on the door and Krichek poked his head in. “Just to let you know, sir,” he said, not specifying which superior he was addressing, “Dominic Massimo failed to show up for his interview. He’s not at his hotel, his car is gone, and his cell phone has been turned off. He’s in the wind.”
Thirty
It had been years since Leah had stayed up most of the night talking to anyone other than Ian. When she had finally crawled into bed, her brain was spinning with all the various ideas she and Luka had generated for the case. It had felt good to be useful—and hopefully it had helped Luka not feel as frustrated about being sidelined. He’d sent his team a list of possible avenues of investigation. It seemed that police work wasn’t all that different from medicine. Create a list of possible diagnoses, eliminate what you could, start testing for the rest. But then came the most difficult part: waiting for answers.
Which made her think of their other mystery, the one she could maybe solve: Risa’s medical symptoms. She finally closed her eyes, diagnoses dancing in her mind, and created a list to check Risa’s records against. All those abnormal but contradictory lab tests. What had been missed? Could Risa be self-harming? The ipecac Jack had found would cause some of her symptoms but not all of them. Was she fabricating the rest?
Leah had tossed and turned all night. Her arm kept searching out the cold, empty half of the bed—Ian’s side, that until a few nights ago had been filled by Emily’s warmth. Finally, she curled up in the center of the bed, hugging a pillow, and drifted off.
Only to be awakened when a girl-sized planet spun off its axis and hurled itself onto Leah. “Daddy’s back! Daddy’s back!” Emily shouted gleefully into Leah’s ear, first one then the other. Her palms squished Leah’s cheeks between them as she bounced on Leah’s chest. “Mommy, he’s back, he’s here! He found us!”
Leah slit one eye open and grunted in response. Emily’s face was pressed against hers, nose to nose. She blinked and rolled Emily off her so she could breathe. “What?”
“Daddy. He’s here.” Emily was kneeling beside Leah but still managed to bounce the bed hard enough to rock the headboard into the wall. Then she peered at Leah. “Wait. You already knew.” She tugged at Ian’s ring hanging from Leah’s neck. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Her mind still blurry, Leah clasped Emily’s hand holding the ring. Oh hell. She should have seen this coming. “Honey—”
“Mommy, he’s here. I saw his computer on the table and then he brought my computer and my iPad and my Xbox back, too. It’s like Christmas all over again.” More bouncing. Leah caught Emily by the waist and drew her into a tight hug. Emily traced Leah’s cheek and lips with her finger. “Mommy, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy? Daddy’s back. Now we can all go home,” she continued in a singsong voice. “Now everything can go back to the way it was.” Leah remained silent, hugging Emily even tighter. Emily’s face softened and Leah felt her fantasy slip away in the way her body went slack.
Still Emily tried one last time. “Daddy’s home and we don’t need to cry anymore…” Finally her tears choked her, and she flung her arms around Leah’s neck, sobbing into her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, baby. We talked about this, you know Daddy’s not coming back. Not like it was.”
“But I saw—”
“I stopped by the old house. The police returned your computers, so I brought them here. I was going to tell you, but you were already asleep when I got home.”
“We built a fort. I dreamed Daddy came and helped. He likes Nate. Says I’m lucky to have a friend like him.” She rubbed her nose in Leah’s hair. “I miss him,” she whispered. “I want him back. Why’d he have to go away and die?”
“I miss him, too, pumpkin. But he’s always here. You know that.” Leah shifted Emily’s weight until they were face to face once again. “Daddy is here.” She placed a palm on Emily’s heart. “And here.” Her other hand went to her own heart. “Forever.”
Emily raised her own hands to cover Leah’s and nodded solemnly. “Even if I can’t remember sometimes? Even if I can only see him in my dreams?”
“No matter what. He’s never leaving you.” But Emily was right, it wasn’t fair to her not to have more reminders of her father in plain sight, even if every time Leah saw a picture of Ian, it shattered her heart all over again.Be strong. For Em. That had to be her mantra. She could break down and deal with her own emotions later. Like after Emily went to college or something. But right now, Leah was all Emily had. She couldn’t let her down. “Tell you what. I’ll try to go over to the house today and bring back pictures of Daddy. Then you can decide where they should go.”
Emily nodded at that. “Can I come? I miss our old house. I want Huggybear and all my other animals and my PJs—the softy, soft ones with the pretty ballerinas. And I need—”
“Honey, I don’t think you can come. Besides, you’re grounded—Luka told me what you did to those boys and what you said to Ms. Driscoll.”
“But they were picking on Nate. They stole his great-great’s army medal. They’re bad guys and bad guys need to go to jail!” Her indignation had her bouncing again. Leah decided this wasn’t the time for a lesson on the nuances of dispensing justice—not with her daughter’s tears still wet on her face.
“We’ll talk about it later. Right now, I need to shower and wash your boogers out of my hair, and you need to go be a good hostess to your guest. You remember what that means?”
“Let Nate play any game he wants, don’t fight over toys, and he gets to choose what he wants for breakfast first, even if there’s almost no Sugar Loops left and only one piece of cinny bread.”
Leah sighed. She’d meant to stop at the store on her way home last night. One week on the job and she was already failing as a working single mom. “Make me a list. Two of them. One for what you want from the house and one for shopping. I’ll be down to help you with the spelling in a few minutes. Okay?”
Emily bobbed her head and jumped off the bed. “I’m gonna show Nate my tablet with the games Daddy and I programmed.” She was out the door, a blitz of bright color and motion.
Leah sighed. She needed to do better. It was just so hard—as if gravity was weighing her down more than the rest of the world. Most mornings she could barely make it out of bed, had to force herself to shower and brush her teeth. But she did it. And she’d keep doing it. For Emily. But if the hours she’d put in yesterday were any indication, then this new job might not be the solution she’d thought it would be. Unless she limited herself to only the administrative aspects—but then she’d be miserable and surely would bring home her frustrations to Emily as well. She needed to learn how to create a balance—one that tilted toward Emily, no matter what. After all, it wasn’t as if she was a detective or would actually find a killer. Her job was simply to advise. To facilitate. That was all.
She’d just finished getting dressed, her hair still wet as she pulled on jeans and a fleece top—the sun might be finally shining, but it was still March and they’d be lucky if the thermometer made it past fifty—when her phone rang. It was Jack O’Brien.
“Leah? I’m sorry, I know it’s Saturday, but I didn’t know who else to call and Risa won’t let me take her—” His words tumbled over each other, he was so agitated.
